Dear Friends,
I have a confession to make: I ate the Iowa State Fair Butter Cow. Then a second butter cow came along, and Kathy ate that one.
Ok, I’m being a little silly. While neither Kathy nor I would ever devour or desecrate our State Fair’s most iconic feature, we calculate that, during our combined 122 years on this fine planet, we’ve each consumed the equivalent of a butter cow. That’s 600 pounds of butter. Each.
Some of you are thinking, “My God, your cholesterol must be off the chart!”
No, my cholesterol level is fine, as is Kathy’s.
Some others of you are thinking, “Ed, you hypocrite, you can’t be a climate activist and eat dairy products. Animal agriculture is destroying the planet.”
Wrong. Industrial agriculture is certainly part of Earth’s climate problem. But farm animals raised sustainably are key to restoring balance to a global ecosystem entirely out of whack (see the pioneering work of Allan Savory). As someone who’s raised food organically for 35 years, I can assure you that our vegetable crops wouldn’t be nearly as productive without the benefit of laying hens.
At this point, some of you want to know, “So, where do you and Kathy get your butter from?”
We make it! This saves money, supports our favorite local dairy, and provides an excellent upper-body workout — eliminating the need to join a fitness club. We purchase Sheeder Cloverleaf Dairy cream. It’s important to us that Sheeder’s cows are grass-fed, their cream sold in returnable and reusable glass bottles, and available at our neighborhood grocery store, Gateway Market and Cafe.
Kathy has experimented extensively with butter-making and has managed to cut down the “shaking” time to less than two minutes. Here’s Kathy in action. The video is an excellent tutorial on how to “shake your butter” while cutting some cool dance moves.
On this week’s program, Kathy and I talk about the great Butter vs. Margarine debate. Check out the Facebook version of that conversation at this link.
HERE’S THIS WEEK’S PODCAST and the complete program line-up, with time stamps:
(01:38) The power of walking to change hearts and minds
(13:42) New climate coalition, with Meryl Greer Domina
(26:48) Who comes up with these laws?, with Mark Clipsham
(39:42) Van Morrison blasted for new album
(52:49) Is butter the bad guy?, with Kathy Byrnes
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Ed Fallon